Its been exactly 5 months since I started Castain Training Systems and I’ve already learned numerous lessons.

Here are the 3 that stand out the most!

1)    There is never a good time to start a business so why not now? Seriously? I had every excuse in the world not to start this business now. My wife was just coming off of her cancer surgery, I’m one year out from writing mucho college checks, we were about to head into the summer months where some businesses slow down etc or in my case . . . blah, blah freakin blah!

Confession: I caught myself putting this off for the better part of my life and was becoming very disappointed in myself. I was tired of that feeling and more importantly, I was already experiencing a future sense of regret over the prospect of going to my grave someday with my music still in my head.

In short, I’d rather perform my opus and get a “boo” or two than experience a lifetime of regret.

2)    You better build your armies before you need them! When I began my Castain 2.0 journey back in November 2008, I embraced it as a 4-5 year plan but with the urgency to show up daily.

2 ½ years in to the plan, I was forced to slow down and rethink my life. Somewhere in that process I acknowledged that I was miserable and hated working for someone else!

That’s when you have one of those “Oh Sh*t” moments!

That’s when you wonder how you will pay your bills and in my case sustain my numerous mansions and “Uncle Paul” groupies.

Note: That last sentence while totally untrue felt really cool to write.

That’s why we build armies BEFORE we need them because life never seems to give you a warning before it sucker punches you!

How did it work out? Well they won’t feature me in Forbes any time soon, but I literally flipped a switch and was able to launch with 5 corporate clients and 20 coaching clients immediately.

I want to be clear on something so you can understand the power of building armies; I didn’t already have those clients nor did I have them in a pipeline. When I launched Castain Training I sent an email out to my network and mentioned it in a blog post. I received an overwhelming response that resulted in 5 “when can you get in here and train our team” requests.

It’s important for you to know that it cost me nothing but lots of sweat and tons of caring to build that type of response.

Why else do I believe things played out this way? (more importantly why am I asking myself questions?)

Because I already had a 2 ½ year COURTSHIP with them!

That’s, why you continually show up folks . . . you can’t buy that type of relationship; you work at!

3)    I got to own a lesson that I knew . . . but didn’t quite own yet!

Encouragement!

Whenever I would have one of those days when you second guess yourself (I admit to be human enough to have them) the strangest thing would happen.

While I didn’t tell anyone that I was worried, an email, text or call would just happen to come in from someone in my network giving me a pep talk,  and then I remembered just how important encouragement is  . . . for ALL of us . . . not just the people who are visibly down on their luck . . .

We need to encourage the silent majority of the people in our lives who put on their social mask  but meanwhile carry the weight of worry, doubt and challenges.

And this brings me to a rather personal point where I will encourage you to put your earmuffs on because I refuse to censor . . .

All the naysayers always ask the ROI question when it comes to social networking!

My response is simple . . . “What’s the ROI on having enough people around you who give a damn (actually I wanted to write the “S” word but changed my mind.  So it was actually an “Earmuffs False Alarm”, but know if this had been an actual “Earmuffs Emergency” you would have performed splendidly!

But seriously . . .

What’s the ROI on encouragement?

What Is the ROI on friendship and even . . .

The ROI on an army of evangelists who genuinely support you?

I’m willing to bet that its actually quite substantial!

To be continued . . .

For more information on how Paul can coach you to levels that mere mortals simply do not possess, click here and just for the heck of it, check out the Castain Training Systems Capabilities Brochure